1. Field of the Invention
The present invention related to cordless paging receivers, and more particularly, to audio paging apparatus and processes enabling cordless paging receivers to control generation of alarm functions broadcasting audio signals during cordless paging operations.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, a cordless paging receiver receives and analyses cordless paging information of a specific type and then if received paging information is determined to contain information related to receiver itself, initiates an alarm function.
In the hypothetical typical cordless paging receiver, when cordless paging information is received, the output mode is expressed in the form of either a tone alarm, melody alarm or oscillation alarm (e.g., a sound-free vibration alarm). The receiving party must then manually depress the operational key of the cordless paging receiver, visually check the message displayed by the pager in response to the cordless paging information, and then trigger application of an interrupt signal to the microcontroller within the pager. With this type of pager, the receiving party is required to visually check the message displayed on the display unit, a requirement that is not always convenient, particularly if the owner of the pager is otherwise engaged or if the display unit is not already within the line of sight of the owner.
Early efforts to facilitate communications with the user of a pager included multiple alert pagers such as the Radio Paging Receiver Having Pre-recorded Voice Messages Which Are Selectived By Address Codes And Read Out Responsive To A Suffix Code of Masaru Masaki, U.S. Pat. No. 4,330,780, and the Combined Tone Only And Tone Voice Multiple Alert Pager of C. J. Ganucheau, Jr., U.S. Pat. No. 4,419,668. Masaki '780 responds to reception of successive radio signals by generating a first decoded signal indicating the nature of a page, and producing a second decoded signal when a second predetermined code signal is decoded within a predetermined time after the first predetermined code signal is decoded, and selects one several digitized vocal comments stored in memory, in response to the reception of the first and second decoded signals. An alert tone is then followed by the designated one of the vocal comments retrieved from memory. The pager of Ganucheau '668 searches for predetermined signal codes within signals received that may, or may not be followed by audio frequency information, and selectively provides various audible alerts in response, depending upon the operational mode of the pager. These modes include tone only and tone and voice alarms. The Digitized Stored Voice Paging Receiver of P. T. Bennett, et al., U.S. Pat. No. 4,965,569, endeavored to receive analog information including a voice message, to digitize and store the voice message, and at the request of the user, to produce a replica of the analog signal as a voice message by reading the digitized message from memory and reconverting it into an analog signal.
Later, the Paging System Using LPC Speech Encoding With An Adaptive Bit Rate of Walter, L. Davis, et al, U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,701,943 and 4,811,376, purported to combine linear predictive coding encoded voice signals with paging signalling information in an effort to generate a composite paging signal.
More recent efforts such as the Method And Apparatus For Combining Submessages Of A Message To Form The Complete Message of Cannon, et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,363,090, seeks to generate a lengthy message by comparing header information corresponding to a submessage with header information of previously stored submessages, and combining submessages on the basis of their header information, while the System For Reduced Congestion Of Radio Paging Channel of Yukinori Sakakura uses a radio base station with first reception announcement to request a calling number and a called number, and after converting the calling number into speech, a second, or call-back, announcement to the called party when the called party responds to the call.
Generally, I have found that these efforts lack an element of simplicity in their techniques for communicating with the called user of a pager.